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The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets. For over three generations, the Academy has connected millions of people to great poetry through programs such as National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world; Poets.org, the Academy’s popular website; American Poets, a biannual literary journal; and an annual series of poetry readings and special events. Since its founding, the Academy has awarded more money to poets than any other organization.

Born in 1968, Mark Wunderlich grew up in Fountain City, Wisconsin. He holds an MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts and a BA in German Literature and English from the University of Wisconsin.

He is the author of The Earth Avails (Graywolf Press, 2014) and Voluntary Servitude (Graywolf Press, 2004). His first collection, The Anchorage (University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), won the Lambda Literary Award. As J. D. McClatchy said of Wunderlich's debut, "The Anchorage bravely takes up the raw mess of desire and pain, the cold ache of longing and loss, and in sleek and searing poems exposes the way we live now to the larger powers of the racing heart and the radiant imagination."

He is the recipient of the Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, Writers at Work Fellowship, the Amy Lowell Traveling Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and two fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. He has also received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference.

Wunderlich has taught at Stanford University and Barnard College and in the graduate writing programs at Sarah Lawrence College, San Francisco State University, Ohio University, and Columbia University. Wunderlich is currently a Professor of Literature at Bennington College in Vermont, where he has taught since 2004. He lives in New York's Hudson River Valley.

Mark Wunderlich

by this poet

A story: There was a cow in the road, struck by a semi--
half-moon of carcass and jutting legs, eyes
already milky with dust and snow, rolled upward
as if tired of this world tilted on its side.
We drove through the pink light of the police cruiser,
her broken flank blowing steam in the air.
Minutes later, a

My privilege and my proof, pressing your eternal skin to mine—
I feel your fingers touching down on the crown of my head
where I pray they remain during this life and in the next.
The intricacies of your world astound me.
You flickered through the rooms where my mother